Heroes of Newerth

With DreamHack Summer 2011 and it's Heroes of Newerth tournament, the IOL Final Four, just three days away, SK Gaming sat down with Magnus 'Raytoran' B&aring;veryd of KD-Gaming to talk about his expectations of the tournament, his team, recent patch changes and a bunch of other topics.

Hello Raytoran! Please introduce yourself to the HoN community and the SK-Gaming crowd.

"Hi everyone! My name is Magnus, 21 years old working as an electrician. Been playin DotA since 2007 and HoN since the beta came. I am abit of an allrounder but I excell at hard support."

Era, Jerax and Rexi joined KD Gaming as part of Man the fuck up. When they decided to ditch Kay and papasrdl along the way, how did you, LezzQQ and TrueNinja happen to join the team?

"Trueninja was in MtfU when I played some try out games with them. I dont know how LezzQQ got into KD either, he is a very good player but his work hours are unfortunatley going against him and its not really working out right now."

For a team that within its ranks has Era, one of the very best European players, and Rexi, one of the most experienced ones – your results since the team formed have been largely underwhelming with your only success thus far being in the recent Excello Bigfoot Newerth Challenge #3. Do you agree with that or do you think it's still too early for you guys to start producing big results?

"I don't think we are producing bad results, we're no.5 on the GR season 5 ladder, we're in the quarter finals in HoN Super Series and semi-finals in the UNGL Bloodlust Cup. We are new and still learning each others playstyles and we're getting there."

As you said, you're still going strong in the HoN Super Series, where you're currently in the quarter finals. What do you expect from that tournament? Do you think it could end up being one of your big breaks onto the scene?

"I suppose that will be up to everyone else, can't really tell if people value the HSS more than anything else. I think that if we preform well in Dreamhack Summer that will be our big break."

If I'm not mistaken, except for Rexi, you have not participated in any LAN events in the past. Do you think that lack of LAN experience is going to be a big disadvantage at DreamHack Summer 2011. or do you feel confident that you'll be able to overcome the troubles that come out of it?

"I don't think its going to be a big disadvantage but there are some nerves going into play I suppose. The DreamArena Extreme takes 1100 people and the Swedish television will be live streaming it online and Honcast as well, so there will be alot of people watching. But if we just focus on the game and not everything around it we should do well."

Now, there's been a lot of talk about whether the format of the tournament is a fair one. TS Gaming and Reason Gaming, as winners of the Swedish only IOL LAN Finals, have been given spots in the semi-finals while a lot of top teams will have to go through a tough and exhausting BYOC Qualifier, including yourself and teams like fnatic, Online Kingdom, Team unZ and others. How do you feel about the tournament format?

"It's a swedish tournament arrangement so I suppose they wanna have at least 50% Swedish teams. But the fact that the BYOC is 6h long or something and ends 12h before the "real" tournament starts is a bit short of time in my opinion."

Which two teams do you expect to advance through the BYOC Qualifier and which one of the Swedish teams would you rather meet in the semi-finals? What are your chances of defeating them?

"I think that KD Gaming and Fnatic will be advancing to the semi finals, and we would rather meet TS-Gaming (no hard feelings). I think our chances of beating TS-Gaming is really good."

In the recent Honcast.com video interview Marc "Maliken" DeForest announced a "competitive circuit unlike anything eSport has seen before with a massive prize pool". What do you think it is? What do you think the competitive scene needs the most in order to develop?

"Competetive HoN needs advertisement, more people really committed to their cause like BreakyCPK in order to develop. I feel like many of the casters that cast games are a bit unserious and not really focusing on the game and coming with tips for all the people watching. There are some extremely good people and I hope that they will keep their dedication up and hopefully the unserious people gets dropped out."

The recent 2.0.35. patch brought some fairly significant changes, particularly to the map. The "Secret Shop" was removed and replaced with "The Observatory" and the Kongor area has been overhauled. What impact, if any, do you think those changes will have on how the game is played?

"I think that the change came at a really bad time now that theres just 1 week left until DHS and there is alot of changes that teams have to adapt to and new tactics to be tried out.

The Kongor change is really welcome cause it has always been an advantage for hellbourne, but as I said I don't know if it was the right time now.

I don't know what they were thinking with the Secret shop, you can just buy everything from the base now so there's no minor micro anymore where you could get lucky and kill their courier there and destroy their Mystic staff or whatever, now you will just have the courier running in straight lines from the base. And I don't know why they brought in the observatory, maybe they could have done something better with that location cause now it's just a travel distance to Kongor with alot of trees for the hellbourne and legion just has an area with alot of trees that noone is going to use."

Alright, thanks for your time. The last question, as always, is reserved for you. Any last comments or shoutouts you'd like to make?

"I'd like to thank KD-gaming for beliving in us and picking us up, and thanks to Era, Trueninja, Jerax and Rexi for being the super active people they are and making this possible."